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The cardboard world of (but not in any way affiliated with) the New York MetsFri, 12 Jan 2018 15:53:40 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6308138982017 Biggest Pulls: 1-5http://www.collectthemets.com/2017-biggest-pulls-1-5/
http://www.collectthemets.com/2017-biggest-pulls-1-5/#respondFri, 12 Jan 2018 13:00:19 +0000http://www.collectthemets.com/?p=4510Read more »]]>Best year ever? You be the Judge.

It took all week, but we’ve finally gotten to the best of the bunch. In 2016, I struggled to come up with five cards to showcase. In 2017, we had 45 cards to get through before the top 5. You can’t predict baseball… cards? Here we go…

Topps kicked off the second season of Topps Now, its limited run on-demandish cash grab, with Opening Day team sets featuring photographs from spring training. Each 15-card team set sold for $50, with an autograph version adding a 16th card, signed by one of three possible players, for an additional $50. The three signers for the Mets were Rookie Robert Gsellman, common Steven Matz, and Noah Syndergaard. Parallels added to the fun, but would any of them be worth $50? I fully expected to get a base Matz (still not too bad because the secondary market has a few people asking way too much for these and little more), but this Syndergaard blew me away. One apparently sold for $200 shortly after I got mine and another sold recently for $125, so we’ll go with that. Realistically, that’s one zero too many, but this hobby is insane. Let me have this one.

I just can’t catch a break, even when I catch a huge break… After pulling card #6 on this list from my first 2017 Bowman jumbo box, I took a chance that I knew wouldn’t pay off by buying another 2017 Bowman jumbo box. I even said as much when I bought it. Either I come up empty in the first box and give up or push my luck and come up empty in the second. And then I pulled an Aaron Judge autograph redemption card. I was hoping for at least $160 based on selling prices at the time but had to settle for $135. Not bad, but not the big hit I was looking for (even after already pulling two $100+ cards that early in the year). One Aaron Judge autograph later and these were selling for more than twice the price. Damn it…

Five months later, Topps Fire was the next big thing and, after a brief search, I found a massive stash of Fire and the newly returned Bowman Mega Boxes. Violating my directive to Never Leave a Mega Box Behind, I left a bunch of the Mega Boxes behind and grabbed two $70 boxes of Fire in their place. Each box had a low-numbered autograph, one numbered to 50 and the other to 25. Both of them Yasmani Grandal… Combined, the two could get you a dollar or so from someone taking pity on you for your sad misfortune. I had passed on some blaster boxes the day before, which had been lucky for at least one person by then:

Three days later, my local Target had five Fire blasters in stock and they had a $25 off $100 deal going. So I grabbed all five plus a pack of Series 2 to push my total over $100. Sure enough, just like the tweet above, the blaster had a purple parallel Aaron Judge autograph redemption in it. What are the odds? Maybe now I could finally get full value for an Aaron Judge autograph. This one had to be worth at least $300, right? Right???

No. Some frenzied bidding at the end brought it to $157.50, better than the Bowman but not by much. At least it was more than I spent to get those worthless Grandals…

My junk autograph collection is filled with worthless base Topps autographs (Mark Hamburger, anyone?), so, coming off a dreadful 2016, I had no hopes for my 2017 Topps Series 1 jumbo box. $100 gets you a base set, some inserts, and three hits that won’t amount to much, but it’s a hit I can take 3 times a year. And there’s always a chance you can get something good. Case in point, this card.

Another Kris Bryant autograph… I suppose I should be happy, but I like variety when it comes to big name autographs. I pulled a nice one (though a redemption) in 2015 and sold it (for more than anything on this year’s list), then got another one in 2016 through other means. Pulling a third one gave me some flexibility – I could sell it and pocket the cash, sell the other one and get back about enough to cover the price of the box, or keep them both and taunt Cubs collectors. I only really need one though and one corner looked slightly dinged, so it was out with the old and in with $90 (minus fees). And I now have a Kris Bryant autograph in my collection. Want it? Tough, I no longer sell Cubs cards with any possible imperfections after having a return forced on me last year on a $7.50 card. Suck it, Cubs fans, this one is mine.

Of course, it has to be Aaron Judge in the top spot. Unanimous Rookie of the Year and nearly MVP to boot, Judge’s historic run was apparent early in 2017. But exactly how historic was still unclear when Topps Archives was released at the end of May. His sudden surge in popularity had the hobby off balance, with prices tipping back in the downward direction at the start of June. I managed to convince my local shop to sell me one box of Archives on launch day from a stack of four set aside for another customer. I lucked out and pulled this card, which looked like a $300 card at first. But the market seemed to be collapsing and even $200 looked like it might be out of reach. I quickly listed it with a $200 buy-it-now and tried to cash out before the Aaron Judge frenzy was over.

Well, that never happened. Bidding closed just short of $250, more than my asking price but well below what it could have sold for later in the month. It turns out I had far more luck pulling Aaron Judge autographs than I did selling them at the right time. Especially once I started looking back at previous years’ sales. But before we get to that…

It was an interesting year for long overdue redemptions. While Panini still can’t manage to get Michael Conforto to sign his 2014 cards, Topps finally sent out 50 Tom Seaver Relics from 2012 Topps Series 1, all plain bat cards. Yeah, not terribly exciting. Among the others I’ve been waiting for, no dice. So I put in for some replacements. I had two Gabriel Ynoa Bowman Black Collection autograph redemptions (they ended within a minute of each other, so I put bids in on both and won both for $13 each), so, with Ynoa no longer on the Mets, I cashed one in. The return was better than I could have hoped for: a Don Mattingly Golden Graphs autograph numbered to 50 and a bonus Travis d’Arnaud RC numbered to 10.

So I tried again with a Jeurys Familia autograph numbered to 25 that only cost me $10. And got a Lucas Giolito base Bowman Chrome prospect autograph and a bonus Marquis Grissom Topps High Tek autograph. You win some, you lose some…

38 cards in, you might be feeling some fatigue. But these last 12 are worth the wait. In a normal year, any one of them could be a legitimate best card of the year. But in 2017, 11 of them fell short. If you’ve ever followed a big case breaker, you would know that hits like this typically fall much less than one per case. Prior to 2017, I had pulled a total of 15 cards that would fit in this range. And while only one of 2017’s hits would (barely) crack my top 5, the sheer quantity of this level of quality is unprecedented in my decades of collecting. And that has me worried.

So what is responsible for this explosion of big hits? Part of it comes down to luck, which, as it turns out, is part skill and part random chance. There’s not much you can do about random chance, but picking the products with the right hits at the right time sure helps. Part of it is the strength of certain players in the hobby, which was a bit lopsided in 2017 (and worked against me on some of the lesser hits). And part is due to how cards are seeded into packs, with autographs of big-name players more common than ever and low-numbered parallels popping up everywhere. That last bit is cause for concern; much like how overproduction of individual cards in the ’80s and over production of different products and inserts in the ’90s undermined value in those decades, dozens of autographs, each with several parallels, from every hot player every year can’t be good for the hobby’s long-term prospects. Instead of driving prices down though as it did with memorabilia in 2005 before the MLBPA stepped in, this trend seems to be driving prices up for a select group of players. It’s completely irrational and unsustainable, right?

Putting these prices into context, I bought a Willie Mays autograph card in 2017 for $115 shipped. I bought a Mike Piazza autograph numbered to 25 for $80 in 2016. And my last Nolan Ryan autograph, from 2015 Topps Heritage High Number, cost me less than $120. All three are big name Hall-of-Famers who don’t sign a whole lot. And all three fell in the price range for this 6-12 range. Which would you rather have?

Pulling a superfractor is a dream of many collectors. Even just owning one is tough – I’ve never pulled one and the only one I own is of a guy who hasn’t been in pro ball since the year the card was released and has an active drug suspension that was issued after he was released. Topps keeps coming up with new 1/1s though, so the next best thing isn’t quite as far out of reach (or, given the overproduction, as appealing…). In the 2017 Bowman Mega Boxes, 1/1s took the form of black patterned refractors. And, for my 5th 1/1 pull ever (after two printing plates, a Topps Heritage Minor League parallel, and a Polar Vortex parallel from Allen & Ginter), I got this one.

So what do I do with this thing? For a lesser prospect or veteran, I would just dump it on eBay and take whatever I can get. But Brent Honeywell was Baseball America’s #30 prospect coming into the 2017 season. That’s a risky spot, likely for either breakout or flameout. So I chose to wait it out and see if he had a shot to make it big.

By the end of the year, he was the top Rays prospect and a top 20 prospect in all of baseball. And there wasn’t a heck of a lot of interest in his cards. I tried to gauge the market by listing it for a month with Best Offer active. Similar cards had sold for about $80, so that was the baseline I was expecting if his market was heating up. Instead, all I got were lowball offers in the $40-60 range. If I was desperate to sell, $60 wouldn’t be that bad. But given that he’s due to debut next year as one of baseball’s top prospects? Might as well roll the dice on this one and try for a big score. Makes about as much sense as buying a box of cards these days.

I wasn’t going to buy any boxes of this stuff. These one card per box $50-60 autograph products are a total scam. At least Clearly Authentic had enough big names on the checklist to give you a reasonable chance of making your money back. If you buy it by the case. Single boxes though? Guaranteed loss.

But then Brent Williams announced a group break of three cases. Brent is one of the good guys and I always want to buy into his breaks, but the return on most things just isn’t there. I’ve been lucky to get my money’s worth from his breaks (more or less), but that’s mostly from not buying into many and some dumb luck (see the definition of luck above). But at $50 a pop, with a checklist loaded with hot Rookies and retired greats? Sure, I’ll go in for at least one box. It’ll be entertaining, at least.

And indeed, it was. The first case yielded one card in particular that caught my eye – a Frank Thomas rookie reprint autograph. The original card is impressive enough, but rendered in acetate and autographed, it’s a real beauty. At 135 copies, it’s not all that rare, but it’s a nice version of an iconic card of a Hall-of-Famer. What’s not to like?

After some agonizing minutes watching spreadsheets and randomizations, my name lined up with this card and it was mine. While I would have preferred someone I didn’t already have an autograph from, it was the only card in the case I really would have wanted. After a solid win in Case 1, I bought a slot in Case 2 and came up empty. Should have gone with Case 3 instead, because that one had a Syndergaard and a Nolan Ryan reprint auto. Oh well.

With all of the focus on Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger in 2017, 2016’s NL Rookie of the Year has all but been forgotten. After my first Corey Seager autograph of the year sold for less than $30, I wasn’t too thrilled to pull another one from 2017 Topps Heritage High Number. Still, this was a nice card and should be worth something. A quick search showed that it should bring in at least $100. You’ve gotta love that Heritage premium… But Seager had an autograph in 2017 Heritage (you’ve gotta love Topps churning out autographs of the same guys over and over…), so nothing was guaranteed. A last second bid brought the price to $80. I’ll take it, I guess.

Or not. Immediately after the auction ended, the high bidder sent me a request to cancel the sale. It turns out that he had intended to bid a hair below $60 and missed the decimal point. So he ended up getting $20 less of a great deal than he was expecting and wanted out. I just let it go and sent out some second chance offers. No dice. Much like the beautiful Clayton Kershaw autograph I tried to sell in 2014, nobody wanted this thing unless I was willing to practically give it away. I still have the Kershaw (taking that one to my grave out of spite), but the Seager still had sales over $100 after mine ended. What gives?

So I gave it another chance with an opening bid of $80. And it sold for $81. At least it’s gone.

What a year for Yankees autographs… Without Aaron Judge on the checklist, prices for 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League were surprisingly low, dropping below $50/box. That made it a great deal and a good opportunity to get some nice cards from other players for a change. So after all the Judge cards, this Clint Frazier was a refreshing change of pace. Even better was how it sold for more than the Seager without the buyer backing out. Yankees fans get a bad rap, but Dodgers and Rays fans could learn a thing or two from them.

7-8. 2017 Bowman Mega Shohei Otani BCP31 x2
$100.00 each (Estimated)

Previously relegated to Topps Update/Topps Chrome Update, the Target exclusive Mega Box concept was expanded to Bowman for the first time in 2017. $15 would get you 5 packs of 2017 Bowman (without inserts of parallels) and two packs of Bowman Mega refractors, all featuring a new pattern. Key hits were color parallels, image variation autographs, and the first US card of Shohei O(h)tani. Ohtani was expected to play in the World Baseball Classic, but an injury took him off of Japan’s roster. After a roller coaster of speculation, intrigue, rulemaking, and wooing from teams, Ohtani signed with the Los Angeles Angels. But before that happened, this card had a wild ride of its own.

Base Bowman is usually a tough set to build with three separate components (base, base prospect, and chrome prospect) combining to form, in 2017 at least, a 400-card set. Getting just two Mega packs for $15 is less than ideal, but the other packs made decent set filler, if nothing else. And who doesn’t need a few more Aaron Judge RCs? The Mega packs themselves were absolutely loaded with big hits; the first 7 boxes I bought had two autographs (Szapucki and Groome) and one 1/1 (Honeywell). I found boxes twice and both times opted to leave some behind for the next guy. Big mistake.

Bowman Mega had disappeared. Rumors of a recall spread and Topps announced at the national convention that it would be back. Sightings were reported in September as the release of Bowman Chrome neared. Supposedly, large quantities were out there, but where they would end up was anyone’s guess. Entire cases of them were available online (at an inflated price), which was a bit odd for a store exclusive. Someone in the distribution chain was shafting Target and, by extension, collectors. This sort of thing was already commonplace in the hobby market, as orders placed (usually several months in advance of even a checklist) by hobby shops are frequently shorted by distributors if someone else is willing to pay more on launch day. In 2017, this spread to retail ($22+ wholesale prices for $19.99 Topps Archives blasters) and even store exclusives. Nothing was safe.

I was lucky. In early October, I found 7 freshly stocked Mega Boxes. This time, I bought every last one of them. Never Leave a Mega Box Behind. The first one yielded a Shohei Otani short print and the purple Cody Bellinger. The next day, a different Target presented me with a conundrum in the form of 14 Mega Boxes. I took 4 and went with two $70 Topps Fire boxes in place of the other 10. I broke my own rule and paid dearly for it. Luckily, someone else followed suit and left two of the remaining Mega Boxes behind. Three days later, I grabbed them and pulled another Otani. And that was the end of 2017 Bowman Mega Boxes.

Nailing down a price for these is tricky. They had been selling for about $80 early on, but the price was down to $50 by the time I got mine. I briefly considered selling my extra, but was glad I didn’t when the prices jumped to $160 as the race to sign him reached maximum intensity. After the Angels signing, the price has cooled off to about $100, which is what we’ll go with here. As with Ohtani’s destination early on, where the price goes from here is anyone’s guess. But this card is at least unique, which you can’t say about much in this hobby anymore.

6. 2017 Bowman Eloy Jimenez Chrome Prospect Autograph CPA-EJ
$120.00

Base autograph. Damn. That’s what I thought when I pulled this because I haven’t been following other teams’ prospects. A quick search however brought up dollar signs. $120 isn’t bad, but even with the Moncada autograph, I barely broke even on the box. It was enough to encourage me to try another jumbo box, which kicked off my Aaron Judge spree. But that’s a story for another day…

And, with the best card I pulled in 2016 selling for just $30, this is indeed the case. It took one last big score from a case break to do it, but I pulled 20 cards in 2017 that topped my best from 2016. And now you get to read about each and every one of them! Settle in, this might take a while…

20. 2017 Bowman Mega Jason Groome Autograph BMA-JG
$35.00

Jason Groome was expected to be the top pick in the 2016 draft. But concerns about signability, among other things, caused him to drop all the way down to the Red Sox at number 12. Still, he was a big name and was poised to be at least as big a deal in 2017 as the actual top pick, Mickey Moniak. And while Moniak had a disappointing year for a #1 pick, Groome fared even worse. His fall started early, with this $35 already being well below what this card had initially been selling for. By the end of the year, the selling price was half that and just about all of his other autographs were well below $10. As always, timing is everything.

Speaking of which… The Aaron Judge boom was in full swing by the time the Judge-adorned 2017 Topps Chrome hit and prices doubled as a result. With jumbo boxes now over $200 each, it would take something big to make it worth it. This was not that something big, but it was the best I got in the box. It’s a nice card, don’t get me wrong, but nobody was paying big bucks for Christian Arroyo in 2017. Well, except for the Rays, who dealt Evan Longoria (actually saving most of the big bucks he’ll be due over the next few years in the process) for him in the offseason. And Rays collectors, well, they don’t pay big bucks for anything, so at least I avoided that mess. Even before that though, the other Arroyo autograph I pulled in 2017 (Topps Gallery) didn’t even come close to cracking the top 50. So if you’re looking for one, I know a guy…

Things are looking up from here on out starting with this beauty. I’m still not a fan of how Topps uses the wave pattern these days, but I can’t complain about this card. I watched this break a few days after the fact, but it was still as suspenseful as watching it live. First, the Quinn Brodey 70th anniversary autograph was pulled. A little while later, they showed a hint of gold. And while I know thinking “Quinn Brodey Quinn Brodey Quinn Brodey” didn’t influence the result, it was still a thrill to hear “Quinn Brodey” on the video. The $40 price probably won’t hold, but most sold so far have been around there. Add in the other Brodey autograph and that’s not a bad return on an $11 3-case break slot.

What a tough break for Andrew Benintendi. Unlike some other big rookies coming into the 2017 season, Benintendi actually delivered. And yet he was still overshadowed by Aaron Judge. It was enough though to make Benintendi a solid #3 Rookie of 2017 and kept his card prices high enough that his good cards were something to get excited about. And a red refractor of a Red Sox Rookie? That’s just a thing of beauty. But that price… If it had sold for the $60 I was hoping for, I would have no trouble letting it go. And if it was only worth about $30 like the purple mega Bellinger, I probably would have kept it. But to go right in the middle… With red refractors normally numbered to 5, cards like this don’t come around very often. But it’s usually best to get out early on hot rookies. That leaves me with a purple refractor from a bonus pack of 2017 Bowman Chrome included with a break slot as my best Benintendi RC. I guess that’ll do.

By now, I have loads of Clubhouse Collection Relics gathering dust. The “A Real One autograph or relic card in every box!” promise usually means that you can count on getting plenty of relics. And yet, in my improbable 2017, I hit four autographs in four hobby boxes between Heritage and Heritage High Number. So it fell to retail to deliver the relics, which it certainly did. I didn’t quite believe it when I saw Aaron Judge looking back at me on a relic from a 2017 Topps Heritage High Number retail blaster, but there it was, pinstripe and everything. You couldn’t ask for a more perfect base relic. Logically, I knew that Aaron Judge memorabilia would be plentiful in the coming years, so I listed it to make back the price of the blaster. Instead, it went for twice that, after fees. Aaron Judge is just the gift that keeps on giving.

15. 2017 Topps Chrome Aaron Judge Xfractor 169
$50.00 (Estimated)

Walmart got in on the Mega Box concept with 2017 Topps Chrome, kind of like what Target had with Bowman but completely different. Walmart’s mega boxes were mega sized and mega priced, despite only containing 12 packs, 10 4-card Topps Chrome packs (3 more than a $20 retail blaster) and 2 exclusive 5-card Xfractor packs. I only ever saw two of these boxes and pulled this Aaron Judge Xfractor out of one. I briefly considered selling it, but the $20 price at the time seemed a bit low. Last I checked, it was selling around $50. I figured I could keep one good Judge (this was before I realized that the silver pack one was worth anything, or even remembered that I had an extra one after buying the set…), so it’s still here.

As this card implies, Yoan Moncada was expected to make a run at Rookie of the Year. And, unlike some of the players in this set, he was even eligible. But before the year even started, he switched Sox in the trade that sent Chris Sale to Boston. Sale had a superstar season for the Red Sox while Moncada was decidedly average in 54 games with the White Sox after starting the year in AAA and having a dismal debut with Chicago. Early on though, there was enough hope to push this card past the $50 mark. Even with him shown with the wrong team…

All of the red I got in 2017 Topps Chrome Update had me seeing green, but getting just over $100 for my pair of red refractors (pulled from consecutive boxes, no less) left me feeling like I dropped the ball. Still, more than $60 for this red refractor autograph of Reds Rookie Luis Castillo isn’t a bad haul. All told, I spent just $216 (thank you, Target discounts) on 2017 Topps Chrome Update, had $144 in sales, and finished two 100-card base sets and one 20-card Rookie Cup insert set (plus an extra base Judge RC). Target’s exclusives were good to me in 2017 and we haven’t even gotten to the big hits.

Now we get to the fun stuff. The $20-30 range is where you’ll find your expectation-level hits. As in, this is usually the best you can expect to get from a box. Now, when you’re spending $60-100 per box, you’re sure hoping for something at least this good to be in there. But all too often you’ll get a 99 cent “hit” and a base card will be the prize of the box. Enjoy it when these fall regularly, even though they won’t make back half of the price of the box.

32-21: Keepers, Buy-It-Nows, and Surprises Good and Bad

Finally, some good cards that I kept because I wanted to and not just because I couldn’t get people to give me money for them… In the case of the Jerry Buchek autograph and the Tim Tebow bat card, I pulled them the day after after getting outbid for the same cards on eBay. So that worked out well. My first Aaron Judge RC of the year was an under-the-radar hit from hobby shop exclusive silver bonus packs. And the similarly-patterned Cody Bellinger purple mega refractor isn’t a Rookie Card but is the best Bellinger I pulled in 2017, so I irrationally decided to hang on to it. If nothing else, I could find a way to leverage it in trade. The Estevan Florial green parallel was a pleasant surprise and almost didn’t get listed after the other parallels I pulled from Heritage Minor League turned out to be worthless. Ditto for the Luis Urias green parallel earlier in the year.

Three of these sold on Buy-It-Nows and I’m still not sure who got the better end of the deal. The Hunter Renfroe autograph selling for $30 was a complete shock to me; I still have one of his autographs sitting around because it isn’t worth anything (good old Heritage premium…). And the Lourdes Gurriel Jr. autograph was a tough one to price, so I probably went a bit low on that. But the Adonis Medina blue refractor autograph? I wasn’t planning on putting a Buy It Now price on that one, mainly because nothing comparable had sold at the time I listed it. It wasn’t selling for $30, so that was clearly the ceiling. But lesser cards were selling well enough to put the floor at about $20. I was content to let the bidding run its course until a bidder in a rush asked for a Buy It Now price. I split the difference at $25. And he requested $18 with free shipping. Um, no. Before I could even respond though, someone else jumped on it for $25.

And then there’s Corey Seager… We’ll have more to say about him later, but suffice it to say that I was pretty happy to pull this card from a box of 2017 Bowman Platinum. Everything else was junk, but this was a very nice card. Die-cut, numbered to 35, only the sticker autograph kept it from being a contender to keep. At least I could make back most of the price of the box from it. When it ended at $28.88, I knew I had made a mistake. Much like when I sold a Byron Buxton autograph for $15.55, I would have rather kept the card, or at least used it to trade for something I would want more. Probably could have gotten a nice deGrom for it… After the photo variation I pulled from 2017 Topps Archives failed to sell (early copies had been selling close to $20), Corey Seager had disappointed me for the second time and it wasn’t over yet.

What a year… After a dismal 2016, 2017 turned things around and delivered possibly the best group of hits I’ve ever seen. I bought a bit more unopened product than usual, somewhere around $4,000 if my estimates are right, but that yielded $1,550 in eBay sales, several nice Mets hits, and a few other big cards that I’m holding on to for various reasons. And that’s before getting to the various sets I’ve completed or gotten very close to completion (including a few extras to sell, trade, or give as gifts). And two dozen more Aaron Judge RCs on top of what’s in the sets or listed here. All told, I probably got at least $3,000 worth of cards for that $4,000. That actually doesn’t sound too good… But it was sure better than last year.

So much so that I can’t fit it all into one post. And so this year we’re going from the bottom to the top through the 50 best cards I pulled from packs, boxes, breaks, or other forms of random chance in 2017 that aren’t Aaron Judge or Cody Bellinger base Rookie Cards. Along the way, we’ll cover most of the big hobby stories of the year, at least as far as they intersect with what I bought. By the end, maybe we’ll have some insight into what 2018 may bring or at least how best to attack it. Let’s get things started with the bottom 18 cards.

50-33: DeJongs, etc.

With a total value of almost $250, the odds and ends in this sub-$20 assortment top my entire haul from 2016. That’s sad. I stopped even trying to sell anything for less than $4.99. so there’s not much else from 2017 that managed to avoid one of my junk piles. And, let me tell you, those junk piles are loaded with worthless hits after 2017. Just about every product produced low-numbered cards, most not worth mentioning. Except for the first two cards, everything here sold for at least $9.99. The Justin Haley powder blue parallel sold for $17.50, but the buyer never paid. And the Seth Romero? As I was saying, low-numbered cards came at me from everywhere, including some unusual places. For its redemptions in 2017 Leaf Metal Draft, Leaf issued one card per player and randomly seeded parallels during fulfillment. When a seller I was buying other cards from had some cheap redemptions up, I grabbed a Seth Romero and took a chance. It came back as a blue parallel numbered to 25. I have no idea what it’s worth, but it’s enough of a wild card to slot in at #50.

And how about Paul DeJong? I finished the year with loads of DeJongs and worthless Rays autographs numbered to 99. At least the DeJongs would sell… As for the rest, it’s a random mix of prospects, Rookies, and veterans. All of it was a crap shoot and I had no idea what to expect for most of it. So here’s a bunch of lesser cards that were still worth something. Any other year, one of these guys might have had a chance to hit it big. But with the hobby so completely focused on a very small number of hot Rookies, everything else fell by the wayside.

Particularly telling here is the complete lack of memorabilia cards. Only two made the top 50, the same number as manufactured material. Memorabilia has gotten stale, with very little offering anything of interest to collectors. So it makes sense that Topps has joined Panini in using player-worn material to cut costs. Topps Inception was full of it and Topps Fire also went the player-worn route. But why even bother? Old habits are hard to break, I guess. Maybe we need to stop caring about guaranteed hits first.

I’m never really sure what to make of the minor league edition of Topps Heritage. I love seeing the variety of team names that can be found in the minors and there are always a few interesting oddities that show up, but the nostalgia factor doesn’t quite work as well as it does for the big league product. It’s not like the Binghamton Rumble Ponies had any vintage 1968 cards (or even 2016 cards). Retro style cards of players with little or no major league experience seems a tad bit presumptuous, especially considering how many of them will go on to careers in the big leagues of scouting, coaching, car sales, or plumbing rather than baseball. Minor league baseball toys with your expectations to the point of cruelty sometimes, as does this incarnation of Heritage. Every once in a while though, things pan out.

The Elephant in Columbia

Thus far, Topps has resisted the urge to go big on this season’s feel-good redemption story. Fresh off a disappointing end to his football career, Tim Tebow returned to his first love and signed a minor league deal with the New York Mets. Most assumed that this was little more than a publicity stunt, and while that is likely true from the team perspective (minor league attendance has risen sharply wherever Tebow showed up), Tebow’s interest in the sport sure seems legit. His talent on the other hand… In the pantheon of baseball gimmicks and cash grabs, Tebow is mostly harmless. People like to see him and he’s only really taking the spot of someone who would be on the chopping block at the end of the season anyway. Might as well give the people what they want.

And boy, do they ever want Tim Tebow baseball cards. The first offerings from Leaf in their short-lived Leaf Live program went under the radar but are worth big bucks now. Autographs from Leaf and Panini have also been big sellers, but the first hint at Tebow’s true power came when Topps released the first (MiLB) licensed Tebow card as a short print in 2017 Topps Pro Debut. That card was quickly past the $200 point and continues to sell for well over $100 despite being an otherwise ordinary card. One can only imagine what a Tim Tebow Bowman Chrome Autograph would sell for. I’m actually rather thankful we haven’t found out, I probably wouldn’t be able to afford it. I’m still trying to land that Pro Debut SP…

Tebow returns in the other 2017 Topps MiLB product, once more without a base card but now with a few inserts in addition to a much more common SP. Among them is his first piece of game-used baseball memorabilia (the memorabilia from Panini to date has all been player-worn). Prices have been surprisingly reasonable – only about $10-20 for the relic. But this is just the beginning. Tebow was promoted to St. Lucie midseason and will be back next year, so a promotion to Binghamton and maybe even Syracuse in 2019 could be in the works, regardless of how well he performs. At some point, Topps will have to address the elephant in the room and put out a card showing Tebow in a proper Mets uniform. But for now, the Fireflies will have to do.

Mets Selection

We can skip the card design because it’s the same 1968 design we saw in 2017 Topps Heritage and Heritage High Number. For the first time since 2013, the base Mets team set has reached double digits. The 11 Mets in the base set sets a new record for Heritage Minor League and the total of 12 across the base set and SPs ties the mark set in 2012. The names are all mostly familiar from Pro Debut, with Dash Winningham (in his professional card debut) and Tomas Nido taking the place of Luis Carpio (who made his pro debut in last year’s edition). Amed Rosario is the obvious standout (other than Tebow), but there are plenty of early draft picks and intriguing names here. If there are any snubs, they would have to be guys like Luis Guillorme and Andres Gimenez, who haven’t gotten much (or any) attention from Topps in recent years. With Gimenez now ranking as the #1 Mets prospect (MLB.com’s nonsensical rankings aside), we should see plenty of him in 2018.

Inserts and Variations

There are only two base Mets inserts in 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League, a Tim Tebow disc and a Mason (Columbia Fireflies mascot) game card. There’s also an Amed Rosario facsimile signature variant, featuring the signature only previously seen in 2016 Bowman’s Best.

Parallels

While those inserts are versions of inserts seen in the other Heritage products, the parallels are something new. Heritage and Heritage High Number only had one base color parallel, an unnumbered blue limited to 50 copies (in addition to several chrome parallels). Heritage Minor League switched it up with blue (numbered to 99), green (numbered to 50), gray/grey (numbered to 25), and orange (numbered 1/1), with no chrome parallels or minis. Colored parallels fall about two per box. Also included are missing first name parallels that fall about one every 3 boxes (while they might seem like an error variant, they are actually a common parallel of the full set). I’m not sure what Topps was thinking with the gray parallels, using a color that doesn’t stand out from the base design and has a name with two different common spellings seems like a bad idea.

Memorabilia

Yes, there’s more here than just the piece of wood from Tebow. For the last two years, the Clubhouse Collection Relics in Heritage Minor League have been from an unspecified source, likely MLB uniforms worn during spring training. Prior to that, most had been from the previous year’s Futures Game. The switch made finding material from the 2014 and 2015 Futures Games quite the challenge, an impossible one in many cases. 2017 puts us back on track with yellow and brown swatches from jerseys worn by Amed Rosario and Dominic Smith in the 2016 Futures Game. Dilson Herrera, who played in the 2016 Futures Game despite significant MLB service time, is obviously not here. It remains to be seen whether his memorabilia will surface at some point. Or if anyone even remembers that he exists.

The cards themselves follow the recent Topps trend of making the cards unnecessarily thick. While they may look the same as their Heritage and Heritage High Number equivalents, they are more than twice as thick. If you were hoping for some consistency between Heritage products, you’re obviously new to Topps. The first parallel, while still numbered to 99 like the other products, is now green as opposed to the different golds used in Heritage and Heritage High Number. Blue (numbered to 50) and gray/grey (numbered to 25) and black (numbered 1/1) parallels also exist, with the gray and black versions featuring patch swatches in some cases.

Also considered as “relics” are the 68 Mint cards that feature actual coins from 1968. Amed Rosario and Tim Tebow have cards here with nickels in the base version (numbered to 99) and quarters in the gray (numbered to 25) and black (numbered 1/1) parallels. Amed Rosario also has an autographed parallel numbered to 10.

Autographs

Heritage Minor League has never been a particularly good source of Mets autographs. The first six years of the product produced just five Real One Autographs and one dual autograph, all sticker autos and none since 2014. As with the relics (which had previously featured a total of just four single relic and one dual relic cards), the autographs were plentiful in 2017. Amed Rosario is the biggest name, with both a Real One Autograph and a Fantastic Feats Autograph (numbered to 30). Also included are autographs from Peter Alonso and P.J. Conlon. Best of all, the signatures are all on-card, just like the big league versions. Parallels are similar to the base card parallels with blue (numbered to 75), gray (numbered to 25), and orange (numbered 1/1) parallels for the Real One Autographs and just the gray and orange parallels (for obvious reasons) for the Fantastic Feats Autographs.

The Verdict

2017 Heritage Minor League sure seems like a turning point for the brand. With Futures Game relics, on-card autographs, and lots of Tim Tebow, it’s hard to fault Topps for much of anything here. And while it lacks two of the biggest draws of 2017 products (Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger), the checklist is still loaded with prospects who could be some of the big names of 2018. I always like to see a checklist loaded with new players (especially since Pro Debut rarely lives up to its name), but having guys who are on the brink of stardom is pretty good too. As 2017 winds down, 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League is a great way to get up to speed on what’s coming up in 2018. Also, did I mention Tim Tebow?

After being threatened with multiple iterations of Topps Archives Signature Series in 2017, it was a surprise to see the first $50/card autograph product turn out to be Clearly Authentic. Topps borrowed the Archives Signature Series format for what amounts to a Tek-style acetate autograph parallel of base 2017 Topps with reprint autographs like those previously seen in Tier One released under a name used in 2015 and 2016 for authenticated memorabilia cards in Strata. It’s a mishmash of elements from other products, but the end result is surprisingly coherent and straightforward. But is it enough to carry an entire product?

Card Design

The basics here are all familiar. The design of the cards themselves is straight out of base Topps. Unlike Tek, Clearly Authentic uses a black and white reverse negative photo for the back image. The background and the front player photo are subtly whitened in the autograph area, ensuring that the signature pops. The photos on the back are not similarly whitened and tend to bleed through in scans. The scans do not do these cards justice.

As with Archives Signature Series, all cards are encased in magnetic holders with foil sticker seals. The magnetic holders themselves are different from the BCW magnetics previously used for Archives Signature Series; these have no brand logo and are slightly larger in all three dimensions. Another change is that the magnets are all aligned to the same polarity so the enclosures can be stacked without pushing themselves apart. That really bugged me about Archives Signature Series, so it’s a nice little touch. The stickers are silver and are placed either over the magnetic clasp or to the right; there appears to be no pattern to the placement.

As with any encased card, the tradeoff for having a pristine card inside is damage to the case outside. The cards are placed directly into each box without a bag or sleeve for protection and most are scratched straight from the factory (note the marks on and around deGrom’s right arm above). It only gets worse when less thoughtful sellers mail the cards without putting them in a proper team bag first or use abrasive or adhesive materials for packaging. Redemptions are all packed in the same kind of holder without the seal. Presumably, the redeemed card will be encased, leaving you with a bonus magnetic holder for your trouble (plus a likely worthless bonus autograph card like Topps has been sending with redemptions lately).

Mets Selection

If you were hoping for anyone new or notable here, you haven’t been paying attention to premium Topps releases lately. It’s a small checklist, so only five Mets made the cut for the base set, all familiar signers: stars Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard, Rookies Robert Gsellman and Seth Lugo, and Steven Matz. Matz’s cards were issued as redemptions and only include Red, Blue, and Gold parallels, no base or Green parallels. Nothing to get excited about, but nothing terrible either.

Parallels

Each base card has four parallels: Green (numbered to 99), Red (numbered to 50), Blue (numbered to 25), and Gold (numbered 1/1). Coloring is done the same way as in base Topps, with the color in the area under the nameplate and in one or two bands placed behind the photo.

Inserts

Each case of 20 single-card boxes includes two reprint autographs, typically of rookie cards or other notable cards. Three Mets are featured here: Nolan Ryan (1969 Topps), Jacob deGrom (2014 Topps Update RC), and Noah Syndergaard (2015 Topps Update RC). (Another Nolan Ryan card was issued as a redemption, but that one is listed as a California Angels card in the checklist). The deGrom and Syndergaard are numbered to 135, while the Ryan is numbered to 45. All of them have a Gold parallel numbered 1/1.

The Verdict

Let’s face it, you’re never going to get your money’s worth out of a $50/pack (closer to $60/pack when bought individually) autograph product unless you get really lucky. Case in point, I took a chance on a couple of these when Brent Williams broke three cases and offered random hits for $50 each. In the first case, I got this guy:

Can’t complain about that, so I will. This was probably my favorite card in the case, but I was hoping for someone I didn’t already have an autograph from (and there are a lot of nice names on the reprint checklist). Still, it is an iconic card from a great player, even if the name isn’t missing from the front of the card… It was also one of the rare cards worth more than the price of admission. Round 2 was not as kind to me, all I can say is blach. I sat out the third case, which of course hit the Nolan Ryan reprint.

By the case or by singles on the secondary market, you can get some pretty nice cards out of 2017 Topps Clearly Authentic at a reasonable price. Single boxes, on the other hand, are very hit-and-miss and are bound to disappoint eventually. And while the autograph subjects are more of the same, the cards themselves are something different and are executed well, case scratches aside. I’m just not sure where we go from here. It seems like Topps Strata is no more, which is a shame, and it’s not clear (no pun intended) what’s going on with Tek. That could leave Clearly Authentic positioned well to expand next year. But Topps isn’t exactly known for stopping at “quaint novelty,” so I’m worried that they’ll find a way to ruin it by trying to do too much. Clearly Authentic demonstrates the power of clean simplicity. But this hobby is rarely satisfied with that.

So this is how the 2017 season ends, not with a playoff appearance, but with Travis Taijeron in the starting lineup… With the Mets effectively (if not mathematically) eliminated by the All-Star Game, a selloff was inevitable. After a slow July, August saw the departure of just about every healthy veteran on a seven figure contract without a no-trade clause. Except for Asdrubal “Trade Me” Cabrera. Irony is alive and well in the Mets’ clubhouse, if nothing else. Meanwhile, the remaining veterans saw their numbers thinned out by a rash of improbable injuries worthy of Homer at the Bat. Michael Conforto swung his arm out of its socket (shoulder surgery, 6 month recovery minimum), Wilmer Flores fouled a ball off his face (broken nose, out for the rest of the season), and Yoenis Cespedes, oh who the hell can keep track of it all? Let’s just go with the Springfield mystery spot.

On the plus side, the departures cleared room for top prospects Amed Rosario and Dominic Smith. And basically the rest of the 40-man roster or anyone due to be a minor league free agent. And Norichika Aoki? Eh, sure, why not? At least we can take comfort in the fact that the front office will make the necessary moves to bring the team back into contention in 2018. You can stop laughing now. Seriously, it wasn’t that funny. Watch out, you’re going to… Well, enjoy your time on the DL. You’ll have plenty of company.

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Nothing to see here…

Three weeks into the season, most teams have seen a lot of new faces. Between offseason acquisitions, new players who made the team out of camp, and MLB-ready prospects who were held back for an extra year of team control, there’s always a lot of roster churn in the first weeks of the season. But not with the 2017 Mets. A combination of an injury-filled 2016 giving plenty of audition time to the AAA talent, a lot of players coming off the DL, and an offseason spent mainly bringing back the rest of the 2016 club has the Mets picking up right where they left off after the Wild Card game. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, unless you’re a relief pitcher on pace for triple digit appearances this season. But that’s why you have two arms, am I right? To date, the Mets have seen just one debut, Paul Sewald, who has since been sent back to Vegas. And who has yet to get a certified autograph card. So this page will remain blank for the time being.

Fun Fact: The last time the Mets went this far into the season with just one new face was back in 1989 when Don Aase was the team’s big offseason acquisition and came in for the save on Opening Day. And that was basically the highlight of his brief Mets career.

Who’s Tommy?

Coming into the 2017 season, the Mets could be assured of one thing: strong starting pitching, and lots of it. Seven starters were at the ready and the team felt comfortable letting go of Gabriel Ynoa for cash. A month into the season, three of the seven were on the DL and Rafael Montero was turning into a disaster as a replacement starter. Of the remainder, only Jacob deGrom lived up to expectations. And while it was expecting a lot for Matt Harvey to return to form coming off surgery, anything would be helpful at this point. And then the team announced that he would miss a start because of a 3-game suspension for violating team rules. In his place, we got Adam Wilk, straight off a redeye from Vegas. It did not go well. The team was in trouble and desperately needed a starter. Tommy Milone was available, so he’s now a Met. The Mets now have the worst rotation in baseball and reinforcements are still weeks away. Who’s Tommy Milone? He just might be the team’s only hope at this point.

Waiting for Amed

So, um, that didn’t work. After three increasingly awful starts for the Mets, Tommy Milone hit the DL and hasn’t been seen since. Meanwhile, the Mets brought in Neil Ramirez to, um, exist in the bullpen and called up Binghamton’s all-time wins leader Tyler Pill to be the sensitive alternative to Rafael Montero in the rotation (Montero would later return to the rotation…). With their season hanging by a thread and a gaping hole at shortstop, the Mets held off on calling up top prospect Amed Rosario. Even after the Super 2 deadline had certainly passed, the Mets held off on calling up top prospect Amed Rosario. With just one more new Met with an autograph card needed to bring the total number of Mets with certified autograph cards up to exactly half of the all-time player list, the Mets held off on calling up top prospect Amed Rosario. Instead, they called up Pill’s 2011 draft classmate Chasen Bradford. The reasons change, but the result is the same – Rosario is not in Queens or anywhere else the big league team goes. Maybe after the All-Star break? It’s hard to argue that he’s not ready when he seems bored in Las Vegas and being ready is part of his catchphrase. He’s ready, we’re waiting, and…Back to Mets Debut Autographs

When you don’t pick until late in the first round, most of the intriguing names will be off the board by the time it’s your turn. Despite several forfeited picks ahead of them, the Mets had to wait to the 20th pick to start their 2017 draft due to a strong 2016. That probably won’t be a problem next year… And so I know nothing about first round pick David Peterson other than his assortment of autographs and memorabilia in various Panini products. Mark Vientos followed in round 2 with autographs and memorabilia from Panini and Leaf and then Quinn Brodey went in round 3 with autographs from Leaf (from 4 years ago). And that’s about it for this draft class. The Mets would go on to sign all three plus 29 of their other 37 picks, but that didn’t include the only other two picks with autographs at the time of the draft, CJ Van Eyk and Jake Eder.

2016 will go down as they year when I just couldn’t take it anymore. Ever-diminishing returns (even with the annual Kris Bryant autograph) already had me cutting back on hobby boxes. The proliferation of the same things in every product and the lack of anything new (Michael Conforto, Noah Syndergaard, Jacob deGrom, and Steven Matz autographs in everything and no new prospect autographs until December) certainly gave me plenty of reasons to pass even on old favorites. And with the focus on the high end more than ever ($22,000 for one box?), nothing new was drawing my interest. And that’s just on the input side of the equation.

On the output side, rising postage rates and eBay fees (and new requirements pushing Top Rated Seller status beyond the reach of most mere mortals) made the prospect of selling unwanted cards something to dread. Why pay for a box that guarantees a hit when the hit will either be worthless or require dealing with eBay? I listed 12 items in 2016. 6 sold. And one of those got sent back, despite my listings clearly stating that returns are not accepted. That was the last straw.

I’ve had plenty of problems with eBay as a buyer and a seller before. No matter which side I was on, eBay always seemed to come out against me. They just haven’t been so blatant about it until now. It all started with a Kyle Schwarber blue parallel RC from 2016 Bowman. It has a slight ding on the corner, which is clearly visible in the scan from the listing. It sold for $7.50. Not much for such a big name, but I was glad it was going to a good home. After everyone’s cut, I got about $6 out of it.

But then the buyer wanted a return. It was defective! Sure, he saw the ding in the scan, but he thought it was just a “scanner artifact.” It is typical, he says, for all cards listed on eBay to be in near mint condition unless stated otherwise (which is absolutely not the case). My listing was obviously inaccurate and deceptive (the listing made no claim except that the card was in the condition shown, which the buyer admitted was true). So now he wanted a full refund plus return shipping. I offered a partial refund as a gesture of good faith. Hell, I would have given him the whole $6 I got from the sale. But he would accept nothing less than a full refund because he wasn’t fully satisfied. And eBay sided with him even though his own complaint admitted that his “item not as described” claim was fraudulent. Huh?

The official response from eBay was that they automatically find in favor of the buyer because they have no reason to dispute their claims. Even when the buyer’s own words contradict the claim being made. As for return shipping, eBay forces sellers to pay for return shipping as a punishment for not offering returns. You see, if you offer returns, the buyer pays. But if you don’t, the seller pays. The return still happens either way. And if you have a problem with that, your only recourse is to report the buyer, which is about as effective as pissing into the wind. I was shocked that eBay would actually admit that they rigged the system against sellers, but the actual rigging was to be expected – eBay has been waging a war against small sellers for a long time, after all.

So now I’m out $3.30 on a card that I didn’t even want in the first place and only sold because I figured that maybe someone out there actually did want it. I was wrong. Knowing that, regardless of what you say in your listings, no sale is ever final on eBay has soured me to the whole thing as a seller. And without selling, the appeal of buying unopened product is diminished. So that leaves this whole exercise in a very strange place. Did anything good come out of 2016? Kind of, but not in the usual way

As if my eBay frustrations weren’t enough in 2016, Topps threw a wrench in the works with 2016 Bowman Chrome. Rather than just doing the usual base set that is largely unrelated to the base Bowman set, they did that and also had a second base chrome set that was a partial parallel of the 2016 Bowman base set, offered exclusively in “vending boxes,” whatever that means (and no, they aren’t anything like the vending boxes of old). Both base sets featured largely the same players and offered no way to distinguish which set the cards were from. It was photo variations taken to an even more incomprehensible extreme. And so, after largely avoiding 2016 Bowman Chrome (possibly why I didn’t pull any big cards…), I bought a 2016 Bowman Chrome vending box on a whim. And to find out just what a “vending box” was (it is basically a smaller upright jumbo box with four guaranteed autographs). The Gerber was the best card of the box and the only one I would eventually try to sell. It was also the best card I pulled from a pack in 2016.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen anything decent come out of hobby shop promo packs. Topps started up National Baseball Card Day in 2016 and offered free (with purchase) packs to customers. The first thing I saw when I opened up my first pack was “CONGRATULATIONS! You have received a National Baseball Card Day Autograph.” Was it Jacob deGrom? Please be Jacob deGrom… No, it was Stephen Piscotty, my second Piscotty autograph of the year. Amazingly, there was interest on Twitter and I quickly negotiated a price of $22 shipped. Without eBay taking a cut, that’s roughly comparable to an auction sale price without shipping, so we’ll go with that. Best of all, even after shipping and fees, that was more than enough to get the deGrom. So at least this story had a happy ending.

3. 2016 Bowman Lucius Fox Purple Refractor Autograph 235/250 $20.53

Getting a $20 card out of a Bowman hobby box isn’t bad. But this was my biggest eBay sale in all of 2016 and one of only three $20 or better cards I pulled from a pack in the entire year. That’s bad.

It was a disappointing year for Mets autographs in Archives, which consisted of just Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden. Still, Crackin’ Wax came through with this blue parallel Gooden in their 2016 Topps Archives case break.

I closed out the end of the year with a box of EEE and pulled my requisite Phillies autographs, both of Cole Stobbe (Aaron Nola, my usual Phillies nemesis, was not in this product). One of these autographs was this amazing autographed patch card with a huge piece of chain-stitched patch. Well, it would be amazing if it were game-used instead of player-worn. It’s still a great looking card, but it’s not really worth anything. So I guess I’ll hang on to it a while longer.

Best of the Mets

After that, there was nothing else worth more than $10. But between packs and breaks, I did manage to pick up a few nice Mets cards. Nothing earth-shattering, but they are nice cards. Takes a bit of the sting out of the year, I guess.

No Good Deed…

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Didn’t you say something about an annual Kris Bryant autograph?” Indeed, I did. And indeed, I have acquired one Kris Bryant autograph each year for the last three years. But 2016’s Bryant came in an unusual way – by donating to charity.

Well, not quite. Technically, it did come from donations to charity. But those donations also acted as entries into the 2016 Crackin’ Wax Allen & Ginter Charity Prize Pack raffle. That prize pack was woefully short on Mets cards, but it did have the aforementioned Bryant (which I sold only after I pulled my 2017 Bryant), $50 in eBay gift cards, several decent hits, unopened packs and boxes, and a while lot more. I was in a slump and saw an opportunity to turn things around; for the price of an expensive break slot, the odds of winning were better than the odds of getting your money’s worth out of a break. And the proceeds went to charity. So I made a flurry of donations in the last few minutes. In the end, victory was mine.

In case you were wondering what was under those packing peanuts, here’s the full contents of the prize pack: pic.twitter.com/PVKU0y5spp

Inside the big box that arrived a few days later were loads of cards: autographs, memorabilia, manufactured material, jumbo cards, Rookie Cards, packs, boxes, you name it. Also a Cubs tie, a Peanuts tote bag and book, eBay gift cards, and even an iPhone cable!

Scratch that, it was only more cards inside, no cable. The biggest hits were the Bryant, an Anthony Rizzo autograph, a John Smoltz autograph, and a Sandy Koufax manufactured ring card. That easily topped my entire year. A year later, it’s time to do it again, only in reverse.

The Package

As soon as I won, I knew I needed to donate big time the next year. I could just take whatever I didn’t want and send that back, but that’s not exactly very generous. I sure had plenty of cards accumulating over the years from unwanted hits and accidental duplicates, but it would take a while to come up with something suitable. Good thing I had plenty of time. 11 months later, it was time to get started. So much for time… Over about two weeks, it all came together. Some packs. A set. And an amazin’ assortment of anything and everything Mets. I might have gone a bit overboard there. But, damn it, I wanted this to be good. In the end, a 5 pound package left my house bound for a lucky winner yet to be revealed.

Sets/Packs/Lots

2017 Bowman 100-Card Base Set
– Includes Aaron Judge Rookie Card!
2016 Topps Heritage 20-card Rack Pack Lot of 3
Lot of 72 Different Mets Bowman Chrome Prospects
– Just about every one from 2012 to the present. Also includes a Tyler Pill from 2011 because there was room for one more.
2016 Topps Now Bartolo Colon Lot of 5
– Includes 2016 Topps Now cards 46, 57, 315, 360, and 396. Bartolo Colon’s first home run! His first walk! His first multi-hit game! And some stuff about his pitching, I guess.

One More Thing…

3 years ago, I had my best autograph haul at a minor league game. 2017 All-Star Michael Conforto headlined the group (on an official NYPL ball no less), but the other notable names included Amed Rosario, a promising prospect at the time and currently one of the top prospects in baseball, on the verge of making his MLB debut whenever the Mets decide that they’re willing to start his service time clock. So probably next year…

Last year, I got another Amed Rosario autograph, this time on an official Eastern League ball. That left me with an extra Rosario ball. I don’t sell the autographs I get at games, so I guess I just have to give it away. That ball rounds out my prize pack donation for 2017. What will I come up with for 2018? Let’s just say that I know of a few closets with assorted oddities that I haven’t figured out what to do with.